


In Short and in Rot

by sp201120122013



Series: mon coeur c'est dans la catacombes [2]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-01
Updated: 2013-08-01
Packaged: 2017-12-22 03:39:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/908462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sp201120122013/pseuds/sp201120122013
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jean goes searching for what is left of Marco in the bowels of a temporary mass grave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Short and in Rot

"Marco," Jean murmured as he made his way through the lower basement of the military headquarters. "Marco, where did they put you away?"

All of the fatalities had been rounded up, bodies collected and piled onto wheelbarrows to be taken away after the aftermath of the last Titan attack. The remainder of Marco's corpse was included among these numbers, having been taken away from Jean in that other basement, two days ago. He hadn't been counting the days, no. It felt like weeks to Jean, like a year had passed in between. He only knew it was two days as a result of him checking with Connie. Jean couldn't trust himself to keep track of anything on his own.

Jean adjusted his bandana tighter around his face, the stench of rotting flesh permeating it nonetheless. If he hadn't already vomited twice that day in distress, he would be doing more than dry heaving every ten steps as he was now. He could endure the stench, though. He knew it would only get worse, although it would be worth it at the end. His Marco was at the end of the tunnel, and he would dig though all the corpses he needed to in order to get to the one body he was after. The body he knew better than anyone else's, with the patterns on it memorized better than his own. Jean dug his nails deep into the palm of his own hand. Too small. Too weak. Not how Marco's were.

The smell was worsening with each step he took, but his resolve didn't waver. He gently unlatched the door to the great room where all of the bodies were being stored, crossing the threshold and taking his first look around. His eyes burned with the rot in the room, jerking his head around to look for Marco. He saw bodies he recognized, comrades who had fallen beside him. There was Colter, the thinnest girl he'd ever seen. And Denny, who was her equal but in fatness. Colter. Denny. They were beside each other, he realized. If he followed past Colter, he thought, perhaps the alphabet would continue. Perhaps he would find "Bodt."

Jean crawled over bodies towards the higher two letters of the alphabets, wading his way through Cs, tags with cursive-scrawled names popping up on some of the arms to help him slowly make his way up towards the lower Bs. He had forgotten about the smell for the time being, his bandana having slipped down his chin to hang loosely around his neck. He pushed one particularly large corpse out of the way, bringing his boot down into the thigh of another. He had to be careful now. The bodies were packed densely, and if he wasn't careful he might miss Marco's.

"Marco?" Jean called out again, loud to his ears but barely a whisper in the room. He hadn't spoken since his interaction with the people who took him from Marco, having kept to silence in his quarters. There hadn't been an opportunity for him to go after Marco until now.

"Marco, where are you," Jean continued to call, crouching over and pulling up each corpse he walked over by the hair, looking at their faces for a second each before releasing them and letting the bodies fall back to the ground. It wasn't that he didn't recognize them. He recognized plenty of them.

The issue was that none of them were Marco.

Jean grabbed the head of another body, fingers closing in on a smaller piece of hair than he had grabbed with any of the previous ones. There was less hair to grab. The hair was thick, short, but something was missing. As Jean hastily yanked it up, the limp body tumbling into his torso, he saw the face of it. It was Marco's under a layer of blood, freckles obscured by a dark red that appeared black in the torch light. Jean ripped his bandana off hastily, shoving it to Marco's face along with a wad of spit and rubbing the blood off, scouring with a rough enthusiasm that lent itself poorly to the situation.

As Jean pulled his hand back, bandana falling away from Marco's face, the remainder of skin clinging to Marco's bones slipped away, his newly exposed freckles rolling off of the decaying fat and muscle they were still clinging to. Jean instinctively stuck a hand beneath Marco's cheek, the half-mask of his friend's face falling into his open palm. 

Jean's hand clenched, the wad of skin held inside of it making a squelching noise and spraying dark, congealed blood all over the front of Jean's uniform. It had already been soiled with the blood of his comrades from walking through the sea of bodies, but it hadn't been soiled with Marco's blood.

He choked out a sob, arms springing around Marco's thin, cold body and squeezing him tight to his chest. Jean felt the damp of the corpse soak his shirt as soon as his muscles had clenched around it, but it only made him squeeze Marco tighter to him. His body was stiff and hard, and Jean thought he heard a crack as he shifted his arms. They didn't wrap around Marco the same as they used to, not needing the same width to manage going around Marco's frame. There was a gap there. A soft, squishy gap that had its contents leaking out at an angle, something that felt like it could slither sliding out onto Jean's arm.

But Jean didn't recoil.

"Marco, what's happened to you?" Jean whispered, running one hand through the remaining hair on what was left of Marco's head. Jean wasn't going to look at the face that was left, the consequences of Titan aggression and his own carelessness. 

"I can't take care of you, I can't be all alone, Marco," Jean said with a whimper, burying his face into the shoulder that the Titan hadn't bitten away. "You were always supposed to take care of me. You said I was weak in the first place. And-and I am, if I couldn't even--couldn't keep--"

Jean wasn't able to force his voice into any more words, and settled for bawling into the rot of Marco's body instead. When Marco had said that Jean had kept him from being killed, it had been nothing more than a fluke. The orders that had kept Marco alive just that once were an anomaly in Jean's train of destruction. He even ruined things after they were already destroyed, if Marco's face was to serve as any indication. Jean wasn't fit to lead. He wasn't even fit to serve.

Jean kicked some of the other bodies aside, clearing a small space on the floor for him to curl up with Marco, pressing their bodies together in the same way Marco used to position them before falling asleep in the bunks every night. Marco wasn't there to shift Jean's shoulders into his anymore, and Jean had to tuck himself into Marco's single remaining arm. The floor was sticky with blood, and Jean's eyes were watering from the smell. He blamed most of it on the smell, clenching Marco's hand inside of his, squeezing hard enough to snap the bones in Marco's stiff remaining fingers.

Maybe if he was still enough, he could blend in with Marco and every other useless corpse in the room. That was all he was worth. That was all he deserved to be.


End file.
